


Does your heart still remember my name?

by esthropp



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esthropp/pseuds/esthropp
Summary: Emily's back from England for good and things are uncertain between her and Spencer.





	Does your heart still remember my name?

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the deal: I haven't written fic in over two years and I've never written anything for Criminal Minds before, but Emily and Reid have me by the throat and they won't leave me alone, so I had to write something. Bear with me because I know this isn't the best, but I think I'm going to try to write more for them. We'll see.

_Two years and you still look the same.  
Bright, blinking eyes look at me the same way._

.

It hurt more than she expected. The not knowing. Mixed in with the relief of being home, the nerves about her new position in her old but changed unit, and the joy of being back with most of her family, it was an interesting emotional cocktail. One she hadn’t anticipated, though perhaps she should have. She’d spent the past month since she took this position forcefully redirecting her thoughts away from him when they lingered a little too long. But now she was back in the States and settled and the unit was finding a new groove under her supervision.

And it hurt. The not knowing.

Which was part of the reason she’d accepted Garcia’s invitation to come out with the team tonight. She missed them, sure, and she was curious about the more recent additions to their family, but mostly, she wanted to see him. To talk to him outside of the semi-professional shields they tended to hide behind at work. She wasn’t sure what kind of enlightening discussion she was hoping to have with him while surrounded by their coworkers, but she wasn’t brave enough to approach him on her own. Not yet. So this would have to do.

Garcia had dragged them to one her of quirky little hole-in-the-wall places that had cropped up while Emily was still in London. Apparently, the tech analyst had been dying to bring her here and she could admit that the establishment was well suited to her own weird tastes. It was surprisingly well lit and surprisingly decorated as well. The entire place was covered in old movie posters. Everything. Including the furniture. It was awesome.

“This place is awesome, isn’t it?”

Emily lifted her head up toward the source of the question. The source of her late night (all the time) ruminations, sitting right across from her. “Absolutely brilliant. Penelope really outdid herself with this choice.” Penelope herself had stolen away to argue with Alvez and Rossi near the jukebox.

“Yeah,” Spencer smiled and nodded, momentarily glancing down to where his fingers were worrying over _The Unsinkable Molly Brown_ before flicking his gaze back up to hers. “We came here last year for my birthday because she knew I’d love it.”

“I take it you had a good time,” Emily guessed.

“I did. It was great. I just thought it was interesting that she wanted to bring you here for the exact same reason. We have a lot in common, don’t we?” He leaned forward against the table and lowered his voice as he said it, like he was divulging a secret, instead of commenting on an observation.

His tone produced a duel, opposing sensation in her: a heavy, syrupy shot of guilt pooled in her stomach and against all rhyme or reason, her chest and neck erupted in a warm blush that she knew, _she knew_ would spread to her cheeks. In an effort to stall the inevitable and give herself a few seconds to think, she took a gulp of her water and let herself be consumed by the sensation while she could.

When she came back to herself and she chanced a look at him, he was watching her with that wide, unblinking stare of his that he got when he was looking for something. She didn’t know what she wanted him to find, but she didn’t wanna lose the thread of this conversation. She didn't wanna lose him. “We’ve always had a lot in common though, haven’t we?”

He didn’t reply for a long beat where he just stared at her. She made herself stare back. After all, she knew what she was looking for.

He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

 _What was that?_ She wondered, but didn’t ask. She wasn’t sure she had the right to anymore and she rolled right through the sting of that thought. It was something she’d gotten accustomed to since her return.

“Take a walk with me,” he offered instead and she agreed after less than a second of thought. What was she gonna do? Say no?

.

They ambled in silence next to each other after assuring their friends that they were only stepping out for a little air. Emily was making a concentrated effort not to stare at Spencer as she puzzled over what he was thinking. He obviously had something on his mind, probably (definitely) the same thing she did, but as the silence stretched on, it was clear that neither of them knew how to broach the topic.

Which left the famed Prentiss intolerance for bullshit (re: impatience) to take care of it for them.

“Do you miss me, Spencer?”

Which was absolutely _not_ what she’d wanted to come right out of the gate with, but they’d be stuck in this limbo of uncertainty and half a friendship for ages if they let themselves.

He shot her a bewildered look. “You’re back.” Which sounded a lot like _what’s there to miss?_ And felt a lot like _I don’t think about you._

And yeah, okay, maybe that felt like getting sucker punched in the gut, but she could‒ she would roll right through this, too. It wasn't like she wasn’t expecting something like that. Just give her some time and she’d—

“I think about you all the time, Emily.”

Her head jerked up to stare at him. _What?_

He wasn’t looking at her, but up at the night’s sky. “I think about how you’re feeling, I think about whether you’d be interested in certain papers I’ve read or written, I think about you in the morning when I’m getting ready and I wonder where you’re at in your own routine, I think about you on the way to work and I wonder if you’d like me to pick you up something at this new coffee shop I go to, I think about you on the way to the bullpen and I wonder if you’ll be in your office or talking to JJ or Penelope, I think about you—”

“Spencer,” Emily made herself stop him, her voice coming out as a rasp due to her heart trying to claw its way out of her throat.

Spencer finally turned to look at her, his gaze having shifted from the assessing one he’d been giving her for the past month to one that was pure emotion and Emily viciously hoped she wouldn’t buckle under the force of it, not when she’d been craving it for so long.

“I wonder if you… remember that night… under the stars,” he said this part haltingly and shook his head as if to help him shake his thoughts into place.

Emily had to tamp down the sudden, overwhelming urge to cry. How could he think she didn’t remember? How could she ever have let him think that? “Oh, Spencer. I remember everything.”

His mouth dropped open in quiet surprise and he breathed, “Everything?”

“Everything,” she echoed just as breathlessly, and then they were reaching for each other and he had her gathered up in an all-consuming hug that crushed two years worth of tension, disappointment, heartache, and anticipation between them. She could sense the remnants of it lingering around them, but feeling his heart gallop against her chest, she knew it would fade. Even if nothing came from this, she was unwaveringly certain that he was still hers and she was still his and they would be okay.

“Emily,” she felt him murmur her name into the top of her head and something behind her ribs unlocked and shifted and spilled a liquid warmth into her chest cavity and it felt like him.

Nosing her face into his neck, she wondered if he could feel her, too.

 .

_To the first boy who lit me aflame,  
Does your heart still remember my name?_

**Author's Note:**

> Please, let me know what you think if you can.
> 
> Inspired by the song From Me, The Moon by LAV.


End file.
